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Do These Initiatives to Help Rank Your E-Commerce Website

The trend in business nowadays is setting up an online shop. This makes sense because a budding entrepreneur may not have the funds to build a physical store for their products yet. And as we have seen, entrepreneurs are getting younger and younger. Plus, it is so easy to start a website: you just need to purchase domain and hosting, design a website, and then launch!

But this also means that there are countless of business websites out there, making the competition pretty intense. People’s attentions are a valuable thing, and getting just a slice of it means that entrepreneurs will have to double their efforts on the Internet. This is where SEO comes in — these are strategies and tactics that can help boost your visibility on search engines.

In this article, we will talk about initiatives that you can undertake to make sure that your eCommerce website is ranking higher on search engines.

Make sure your domain name is easy to remember

You might have already done this step, but it bears repeating: make sure your domain is not too difficult to recall. The best way to avoid overcomplicating your domain name is to create a shortlist of domains that you want. When you make this list, remember that this name will represent your brand. This name will also be what people will say when they recommend your shop to potential customers. Once you have created your list, do a domain name search to make sure none is taken yet. When you are sure they are all available for purchase, test out your domain name by asking your friends or family which ones are easier to remember. You can even ask random strangers if you want more respondents. Tally up the scores, and the name with the highest vote, wins!

Do keyword research before any other SEO task

If this is not your first time dabbling in SEO, you would know that 90% of the time, the task involves research. Before you are able to do on-site and off-site efforts to rank your website higher on search engines, you must know which keywords you should be targeting first. Note that when you target the wrong keywords, you run the risk of generating low-quality traffic with very few conversions.

Here is what you need to remember when looking for keywords:

Focus on the most important pages first: As an eCommerce website, your most important pages are your homepage and the product pages. When doing your keyword research, you must factor in the search volume of the keywords and relevancy. Obviously, you must choose keywords that are highly relevant to what your are selling and that has a high number of searches. More importantly also take note of ranking difficulty — it is a score that notes how difficult the keyword would be to reach the front page. Ideally, you must choose keywords that has a low ranking difficulty. There are tools that can help you look for the right keywords like Google’s Keyword Planner and Moz’s Keyword tool.

Target keywords for blog posts: Especially if this is your first ever online business, consider writing blog content. This will help you gain momentum to rank your eCommerce site higher than your competitors. While you are doing your keyword research, try to see which ones will not fit on your website but can be wiggled into a blog post. This is also an opportunity for you to use long-tail keywords — these are unique phrases people use when they make a search.

Be wary of keyword cannibalization: Keyword cannibalisation means that you are targeting the same keywords on multiple pages. The ideal is to target a different primary keyword and secondary keyword per page. Use the primary keyword at the first 25 and the last 25 words of the page, and the secondary keyword anywhere in between.

Perform thorough competitor research

Competitor research involves looking at the keywords your competitors are targeting, checking if they have a high domain and page authority, and studying their website structure. Some people call this looking at “pegs” or inspiration for your own website. But this is also studying how other online stores that sell the same products or services as you are faring online. For one thing, you can craft strategies that can target their audience. And secondly, you can always treat it as a case study. What makes their promos successful? What efforts are they performing that I have not tried?

Looks like a lot of work, right? Well, for SEO, you can always ask for expert help. When you are not sure about choosing which keyword to use or how to use it, do not hesitate to ask someone in the field. But remember that people will be brand loyal if you are consistently delivering high quality products or services — so never forget to improve your production line, too.